Tag / Korg 700

Portishead is one of the bands I really love because they sound like Portishead. Nothing else really sounds like they do and to top it off they sound great. Dark, romantic and painful. Right up my alley. The cherry on top is they use a lot of real analog synths. Band member Adrian Utley shows us some of what they have in the video above.

“Portishead are a band formed in 1991 in Bristol, England. The band is named after the nearby town of the same name, 13 km (8 mi) west of Bristol. Portishead consists of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, and Adrian Utley, while sometimes citing a fourth member, Dave McDonald, an engineer on Dummy and Portishead.” – Wikipedia

Long before the hipster Microkorg hit Williamsburg there was the Korg 700s Minikorg. It was one of Korg’s first synths and to this day it’s one of my favorites. Every time I hear one of its raspy detuned aggressive sounds it makes my brain jump to it’s evil side. Daniel Miller used a 700 to create one of my all time favorite records TVOD/Warm Letherette by The Normal (iTunes link). Daniel soon went on to found Mute Records and sign Depeche Mode.

“It has three ring modulators for some strange sounds and noises. Sometimes a decent bass sound for techno music can be achieved using the MiniKorg’s hi-pass and low-pass filters. The two oscillators can be de-tuned and they offer triangle, sawtooth and square waveforms. There are some strange analog effects built-in as well such as portamento, a rudimentary repeat-delay, auto-bend (bender), vibrato and Chorus and Noise waveforms.” – vintagesynth.org

You can find the Korg 700s MiniKorg on eBay from time to time for a decent price. It’s on my wishlist!